MCD stalemate delayed work at Ghazipur landfill: Kejriwal

The Ghazipur landfill site was the last leg of the Delhi chief minister’s visit to the garbage mountains in Delhi in the past week

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal inspected the Ghazipur landfill site on Friday and found that the garbage processing work at the Capital’s largest trash mountain was “unsatisfactory” suggesting that the December 2024 deadline announced by him to clear the mound of garbage is likely to be missed.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, along with MCD Mayor Shelly Oberoi, visited the Ghazipur landfill on Friday. (HT Photo)

Read here: Lagging on work at Okhla landfill: Delhi CM Kejriwal

Citing the reasons for the delay, Kejriwal said the three companies hired for the work at Ghazipur have been “hostile” towards each other, adding that only hiring two more agencies will resolve the problem and speed up the work. However, this cannot be done till the standing committee of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was constituted, following a pending Supreme Court order on the matter, he said.

The standing committee is an 18-member decision-making body that effectively manages the corporation, with functions such as providing financial approval to projects, and discussing, finalising, and implementing policies, among others.

The Ghazipur landfill site was the last leg of the CM’s visit to the garbage mountains in Delhi in the past week to inspect work progress. He found the work was “progressively satisfactory” at Bhalswa while it was “slow” at the Okhla landfill site.

Delhi is sitting on around 27 million tonne of waste across three landfills at Bhalswa, Ghazipur and Okhla.

“In the last few days, I have been to Bhalswa and Okhla landfill sites. Today I visited Ghazipur where 80 lakh (8 million) tonne of garbage exist. Progress in the removal of this garbage is significantly slow here. As per the scheduled target, 15 lakh (1.5 million) tonne of garbage should have been removed from the site (by now). But so far, only 5.25 lakh (.52 million) tonne of garbage have been removed,” Kejriwal said.

Clearing Delhi’s garbage mountains was the first of the 10 “guarantees” that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had made in the run-up to the civic polls in December 2022. After winning the elections, the AAP-led MCD administration on March 3 this year announced that the project has been expedited, with a target to clear Okhla by December 2023, Bhalswa by March 2024, and Ghazipur by December 2024.

“This is a joint venture of three companies, and they have not been on the same page since the beginning of work. We are going to hire two more agencies to speed up the progress. To award any such big project the MCD needs the approval of its standing committee. The issue of alderman is in the Supreme Court. Once the court’s order is received, the committee will be constituted, and two new agencies will be hired. During that period, we will decide whether to persist with the existing three agencies which are hostile towards each other and which are hindering progress. But at the Ghazipur landfill site progress is not satisfactory,” Kejriwal added.

The details of the disputes among the three companies were not immediately available.

The erstwhile three municipal corporations in July 2019 began an ambitious project to clear the three landfills in Delhi through the process of biomining after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordered that the Capital’s legacy waste dumps be cleared within a year.

Read here: 4 years past deadline, MCD yet to clear Delhi’s landfills

HT had reported on September 24 that four years on, since the AAP government came to power, the process to clear these garbage mountains at Okhla, Bhalswa, and Ghazipur has made little headway—MCD’s latest progress report dated July 31 this year noted that the civic body has been able to clear 8,999,000 tonne of legacy waste—less than a third of the original 28,000,000 tonne of legacy waste.

Experts said that the quantity of legacy waste removed from the site should not be the only “indicator” of the remediation process. “The public should be informed about what is happening with the extracted materials to ensure accountability and responsible management practices. Bioremediation and biomining are promising techniques but given the scale of biomining at approximately 20,000 to 25,000 tonne per day (at three sites) it is paramount that the disposal of segregated combustible materials is disposed responsibly,” said Richa Singh, programme manager, solid waste management and circular economy team at Centre for Science and Environment.

Meanwhile, Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor said it was surprising to see that after eight months of power in MCD, Kejriwal was trying to “avoid responsibility”. “AAP leaders have no administrative experience. The truth is they fear that AAP itself is not allowing the formation of MCD Standing Committee despite there being no court stay in this matter,” said Kapoor.